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HIV-positive mothers and their unborn babies are benefiting from an 11th-hour infusion of federal funding that saved an Illinois nonprofit from closing due to the state budget impasse.

Anne Statton, executive director of the Pediatric AIDS Chicago Prevention Initiative (PACPI), said approximately $500,000 in available federal funds was released to the organization by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). The funds will cover outstanding invoices for contracted services PACPI performed between July 2015 and March 2016, Statton said.

PACPI, which works to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmissions, depends on IDPH for about 85 percent of its funding. Currently, the organization has state contracts that collectively total about $845,000.

Without the federal funding, PACPI would have been forced to shut down in October.

Community organizers scored a major victory last month when the University of Chicago Medicine announced plans to reopen a Level 1 adult trauma center at its Hyde Park campus. Progress Illinois looks at what comes next for the project and the activists who led the five-year trauma center campaign.

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The following comes from the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Immigrant women in need of help securing orders of protection against abusive spouses. Elderly people seeking medical treatments. Autistic Illinoisans and their families. The disabled, the addicted, the young. When Governor Rauner took a last-minute knife to social service investments in this fiscal year's budget, he aimed for Illinois's most vulnerable populations--and he hit his mark. That was the message at a Wednesday rally at the Thompson Center, where the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) brought together hundreds of supporters representing a broad array of those who will suffer due to the Governor's suspension of a wide variety of spending that supports investments in some of Illinois's most underprivileged communities.

"What the Governor did, as the clock ran out on the Friday before a holiday weekend, is not just a slap in the face to the immigrant community after he stood with us earlier this year and told us how important we are to Illinois," said Lawrence Benito, CEO of ICIRR. "It's an affront to the millions of Illinoisans who rely on these investments in order to pursue self-sufficiency. These are cuts that enable economic success; cutting them is pennywise and pound-foolish. It's the height of irony: Governor Rauner, who portrays himself as a savvy businessman, seems oblivious to the returns on the state's investment in immigrant and other disadvantaged communities."